file sharing

If you’re using a Mac to connect to UUA network shares you may have noticed when you click on a folder with lots of items in it nothing happens for a minute or two. This has annoyed me enough that I actually switched to a Finder replacement (muCommander) for a while. (Finder is the Mac file management program that corresponds to Windows Explorer on Windows machines.) That worked pretty well but a recent conversation with a coworker lead me to another solution. (more…)

It seems like I always want to send someone a file, and sometimes it’s too large to attach to any email message. Or, I want to send a bunch of files (photos, maybe), and many email systems refuse to accept ZIP files. So when StumbleUpon showed me WeTransfer I was immediately interested. Follow the link for an easy way to send giant attachments to any email address.

This service is one of my favorites. You can do all sorts of stuff with it but I’d like to briefly go over how you can use it to send someone a large file (without completely filling their email inbox). Hit the link for all the gory details. (more…)

You head over to http://jetbytes.com/ click the “Browse” button
Find the file you’d like to transfer and click “Open”
Jetbytes will create a link for you to send to email or IM to the recipient
They click the link and the transfer starts.
Once the transfer is complete you can close the page.

Why is this cool? Suppose you’re trying to send someone a large file as an email attachment, but their email service has a size limit on attachments (a 25 MB limit is not uncommon). This lets you send them a link instead and it won’t eat up all their inbox space. There is unfortunately a downside to this method: you have to leave jetbytes open in your web browser until they have downloaded the file. So it works best when you know they are at their computer.

Edit: Another way to go for online file transfer is DropBox. I’ve breifly posted on how to share files with it here.

Have you ever wanted to have the same file on your work computer and your home computer (or your smart phone/laptop/netbook)? Or maybe you and a coworker need to share some files temporarily. In either case there are a couple services that might be useful to you: DropBox and SugarSync. Both do essentially the same thing. They both provide you with an account online that stores files. That is nice but not an amazing service. Where these services do become useful is when you install a small program on your computer. Once installed it automatically uploads files placed in certain folder to your account. If another computer has the program installed it will automatically download the file.

End Result: Anything you put in a Sugarsync file or your Dropbox shows up on all your computers.

You can also access your files from any computer by logging onto their website a computer or smart phone.

Both have a free version capped at 2GB, though you can pay for more space. They also offer slightly different features so you may wish to check which one suits you better (my favorite is Dropbox).